NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 34: ADVANCEMENT
Sarah Avery Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1
Tutorial Realm
Sarah took another long drink of tasp and closed her eyes, enjoying the breeze. It was beautiful here, in a weird, surreal way. The redgrass fields swayed gently in the wind and clouds scudded by the giant vine above the strip mall.
“Why in the hell would anyone not want to take advantage of this?” Sarah asked disbelievingly.
“The limitation on Attribute advancement is the primary reason. You cannot increase them through training your grafts and practicing with your racial abilities. All of your Attribute advancements—save ones you achieve via lesser shard absorption—will be deferred to when you end your time here. Any System Achievements you earn will also be deferred, and they are much more difficult to earn here anyway.” Sarah saw his gaze flick over to the enormous floating island above the strip mall, but he didn’t say anything else about it. “I’m telling you this all out of order! Look. There will be time for your questions later.
“Your personal power will grow as you attain new grafts and train. Right now, you are just at the cusp of your Rebirth, so your power is barely above a regular, non-Reborn person. But that’s just fine; in fact, it is ideal for this Tutorial! It means you have a clean slate upon which to plan your advancement.”
Sarah frowned and said, “You keep on talking around this idea of advancement or rank. Is this like some kind of game? Levels and powers and XP and all that? Am I in a virtual reality game?”
Gammon shook his head, “No. This is no game; though there are aspects of Rebirth that have been… gamified. Your language has some interesting idioms and context, so I’m having a bit of difficulty with the translation. The System that governs the growth and advancement of Reborn was implemented at the same time as the first people were Reborn. It was meant to help identify items, monsters, spells, and grafts. It also serves as a personal cloud storage and etheric array platform for you. It’s all in service of one goal: advancement.”
“There’s that word again.”
“Get used to it.” Gammon gestured back into the kitchen. “And fetch us another tasp. This is thirsty work.”
Sarah nodded and went back into Gammon’s little home, feeling cast adrift as she made her way into the tiny kitchen on autopilot. She’d been holding it together based on wonder, adrenaline, and the near certainty that she was going to wake up at any moment. The longer this went on though, the more she had to confront herself with the reality that this was happening. And the more she thought about it, the more she wished Griffin were here.
He wasn’t an extremely good decision-maker and tended to forget…well pretty much everything, but he was her best friend and she loved him. He was gone now. Should she mourn him as dead? Or cling to hope and assume that he at least had some of the same advantages as her and that he was somehow surviving. She got the tasp from the cooler and brought it out to Gammon on the front porch.
He took the bottle from her and opened it, taking another long gulp before belching with satisfaction. “Advancement!” He announced loudly to the plains, “That’s what this is all about. Your Rebirth replaced your original heart with an etheric construct of incredible artifice to give you the metaphysical physiology to allow you to wield the supernatural powers of the terrifying beasts and revenants that we obtain the power from.”
“So, we somehow get the powers of monsters? I assume we have to fight or kill them. That seems about par for the course.”
Gammon chuckled. “That’s usually correct. The monsters are made of tensa and the most powerful ones have it crystallize within them into powerful artifacts called ethershards. And Reborn must also absorb them to advance their Attributes. Only the most high-quality ethershards from the most dangerous monsters—the System labels them as elites or Boss monsters—will grant a Reborn a new graft, a new power. Once a Reborn has filled all five of their attributes with five grafts—a total of twenty-five powers—their powerset is complete.”
“Attributes? Like strength, dexterity, constitution… that kind of thing? And why twenty-five powers? That seems arbitrary.” Sarah took another drink of her tasp and looked around, feeling increasingly untethered from reality. “I feel like I’m in a Kafka-meets-Gygax nightmare,” she muttered.
“I don’t think I can help you with that,” Gammon said. “It sounds like wherever you came from, you didn’t have a lot of experience with tensa energy or etheric theory?”
“It’s all magic and superpowers to me,” Sarah said, “this all seems so beyond fantasy that I just keep waiting to wake up.”
“This all may be a bit much for you, but it’s best you accept it now. Do whatever mental gymnastics you need—I’m afraid my teaching expertise doesn’t extend to the basic facts of existence.” Gammon finished off his tasp and tossed the bottle out into the plains. He tossed it a long way. Sarah didn’t see it come down. “All the advancement is to a purpose—and all who are Reborn participate in it in some way, even if they don’t directly combat monsters.”
“You keep talking about monsters. Are you being literal here? Like zombies and dragons and… I don’t know, hydras?”
Gammon shook his head, pulling another tasp from the cooler and popping the lid before taking a long pull before he continued, “Monsters are emanations of tensa. They’re natural in areas of high tensa concentration. They take a variety of forms, and their behaviors vary wildly. But they’re invariably hostile. That’s by design.”
Gammon pointed to a strange little shadowed part of the plains. “Do you see that? It’s a monster native to the plains here. It’s a common Class 1 beast. Nothing truly special about the thing except of course that it’s supernaturally strong and fast compared to any baseline human. It has no real special abilities, but it’s an effective predator here on the plains because it’s cunning and sneaky.”
The shadow was slowly moving toward them. Sarah watched it nervously. “They’re hostile by design? Whose design? Why?”
“Form the framework for a Second Form anima projection,” Gammon said flatly.
Sarah blinked and said, “I’m sorry what?”
“Look at your racial gift, Never Unarmed. Use the System.”
Sarah nodded and closed her eyes, needing to cut off the distractions to read through the menus. The System menus materialized as soon as she thought of them, floating in her mind just as surely as they would if she were to open her eyes. She navigated to her status and concentrated on the Never Unarmed racial gift.
Never Unarmed
Racial Gift – First form
Evolution Conditions - ???
Cost – 100 sparks per weapon
Cooldown - None
Description – Create weapons using Second Form anima projections. Infuse the projection with tensa to create a melee weapon. Size and weapon type are dependent upon the wielder. Weapons are considered Enchanted at level 1 for the sake of overcoming damage resistance.
That was it. Sarah opened her eyes and looked at Gammon. “How was that supposed to help?”
Gammon didn’t say anything else. He was watching the shadow on the plain intensely. It had gotten significantly closer as they spoke, moving quite quickly. Gammon took another sip of tasp and continued his suddenly taciturn silence.
“Gammon,” Sarah said, panic edging her voice, “I told you, I can’t do it.”
Gammon watched the shadow as it got closer. Sarah thought she could see a dark form in the grass now, it had gotten that close. “Gammon. Come on.” She stood up from her chair, getting ready to go into the house. The door slammed shut and wouldn’t open. “Gammon.” The short brown tattooed man sipped meditatively at his tasp, not looking at Sarah.
She rattled the door in its frame one last time. Nothing. Well. Clearly, this was meant to be some kind of lesson on action under pressure. Great. Sarah closed her eyes, forming the Second Form within her before her eyes were fully closed.
Why do I suddenly know this? She wondered. Is it thanks to that Synthskill thing? Is that why I know all about anima forms and configurations?
Gammon’s voice suddenly cut into her thoughts, “Good, that’s the framework. Now, you’ve got that racial ability, Always Armed. Think about using it, just like you think about acknowledging a System message. It should come to you, naturally.”
Sarah felt what Gammon was talking about. The power existed within her with its own texture and temperature. It felt sharp and hard, but eager to be used. She just used it, like she had acknowledged the System messages earlier. She felt something shift within her as her anima reconfigured itself without her conscious effort. She felt a kind of a strange draining sensation and then a kind of warmth in her left hand. She turned the hand over, looking at her palm, and saw that there was a little bead of highly polished metal embedded into her flesh. From one moment to the next, her hand went from empty to holding a fantastical sword.
She gaped at the weapon in her hand. The sword she held had no hand guard and seemed to be made all of one piece of dark bluish-purple opalescent crystal. It felt like it was designed to fit into her hand specifically. She waved it around experimentally and felt the wind on the blade like it was wind on her own skin.
“Yes!” Gammon said, urgently, “Now, your graft, The Edge That Cuts Anything. Activate it the same way you activated your racial ability… do it now!”
She searched within her and found another power inside her, this one feeling strangely ephemeral, though no less sharp or present than the last power. She used it and felt power collect from within her—tensa energy draining from her pool until it was almost gone—and collecting into her left index finger. Her left fingertip glowed with incandescent blue light. By instinct, she ran her glowing finger along the crystalline edge of her new sword and saw that the blue light transferred from her fingertip to the edge of the blade. The sword now looked like the edge was made of light and it glimmered with ominous promise.
“Gammon, this is amazing and everything, but I think you might be forgetting something,” Sarah said, her eyes wrenching away from the sword to watch that shadow in the tall red grass resolve itself into a hideous, hairless, four-legged predatory monstrosity with a whiplike tail and long, sharp teeth dripping with drool as it crept out of cover. “I can’t actually use this thing!”
Gammon laughed she felt an intimidating pressure coming from him. Gammon’s anima surged forward like a tidal wave, and the disgusting monster ran back into the grass. “Don’t worry,” Gammon replied, taking another drink and easing back into relaxed persona, “You do not need to fear the monsters here while I am with you. Let the sword go.”
Sarah straightened, relaxing, only just now realizing that she had crouched down defensively. She felt instinctively how to stop using her sword and as she did, the sword disappeared in a cloud of effervescent sparkles. She shook her hand, feeling a slight tingle in her fingertips. The sword had disappeared, but Sarah knew without a doubt that she could call it back in an instant. She experimented, flexing with her ability, feeling the sword appear and disappear as quick as thought. It was wild.
“That sword,” Gammon said, “is formed from your anima and created by tensa. It’s a weapon that can never be destroyed or even damaged. It’s a rare power indeed and one you should be grateful for.” Gammon pushed past her on the front porch, waving his hand to have her follow him. “Come on, we’ve got training to get to. You have a long way to go before anyone would consider the Tutorial complete.”
Sarah only hesitated a moment before she jumped off the porch and followed Gammon, still summoning and dismissing her sword. She sliced at stalks of grass with the weapon and the grass stood no chance. She thought she’d have a promising future as a creative topiary sculptor, but it seemed like Gammon was proposing to train her to be some kind of monster slayer. Well. Fine.
If this is what she needed to do to survive and thrive here, she’d do it. She was sure she wasn’t finished being shocked but Gammon had been right about Sarah: she had the spirit of a fighter. She’d thought her dreams had died when she’d injured her knee and had to stop gymnastics. Sarah had adjusted her perspective and pursued new dreams—that attitude had led her to be able to become a streamer who could live entirely on the content she created after she’d hurt her knee in gymnastics. She would not let this world break her.